Music: Triple-Threat Man

The Metropolitan Opera usually picks a conductor to work at his
specialty, thus assigns him to one particular "wing" of the Met
repertory, i.e., the French, German or Italian. Jonel Perlea, the
goateed Rumanian conductor whom the Met hired this season, had no
specialty, and the Met decided he needed none. When he arrived in
Manhattan in October, he was told that he would have to work in all
three wings. His first assignments: Tristan und Isolde,

Rigoletto, Carmen. By last week, Conductor Perlea had proved that he was
just the man who could...